


5 times Phil, Natasha, or Clint were forced to take downtime they didn't want

by kat8cha



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Sickfic, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:05:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Compress - Phil has a headache, Clint and Natasha are menaces.<br/>Defenestration - Phil's resting from an injury, they all play scrabble.<br/>Comic - Natasha's covered in hives and recuperating at Phil's.<br/>Counterpane - Clint has the plague (not the REAL plague, just a normal plague).<br/>Fuzzy - They've all been dosed with something and are held in quarantine until it wears off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 times Phil, Natasha, or Clint were forced to take downtime they didn't want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dizmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizmo/gifts).



Compress –

Coulson had a great compress for headaches. It smelled of eucalyptus and could be heated up before you pressed it over your eyes or wrapped it around the back of your neck. As the pressure headache began to mount Coulson wished that he was alone in his office so he could turn the lights down low and wrap the compress around his neck.

Barton and Romanoff looked unrepentant; Fury looked like he was hiding his amusement behind a thin veneer of anger that only worked on people he didn't know. Wilkinson was looking furious and completely clueless to the fact that Nick Fury honestly didn't care about his complaint. He also had a glorious bruise beginning to cover half of his face and blood crusted under his nose and on his forehead.

"Thank you, Mr. Wilkinson, if you don't mind I have one of our nurses waiting outside, she'll make sure you're very well taken care of." Wilkinson looked ready to protest but when Nick Fury leveled you with a solemn stare taking to your heels was generally a good idea. He shot a victorious look at the two SHIELD agents as he left, however. As soon as the door closed behind him Fury leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk. "So."

There was a brief pregnant pause as if nine months of painful waiting had been compressed into 3 short seconds before giving birth.

"I'm not apologizing." Barton and Romanoff spoke in unison then slanted looks at each other before they returned to ramrod straight posture staring at the wall behind Fury's head. Coulson took the opportunity to relax his own posture and lean against the wall.

Spies, a bunch of big whiny babies.

"Nevertheless." Fury fished out a folder and flicked it across the desk. "You're on disciplinary probation for the next week." Two mouths dropped open to complain. "No excuses, Wilkinson will take this 'accident' back to the WSC and they're not happy with us anyway." 

They never were. Wilkinson had, of course, deserved everything that he got and worse. Making derogatory comments about Black Widow was the quickest way to get punched in the face that Coulson knew. There was one person that Natasha allowed to leer at her ass without repercussion and that was the man who had 'accidentally' rammed a door into Wilkinson's face after Natasha had 'accidentally' tripped him so he smashed his face into the table. Phil escorted the two agents out of the room and rubbed the back of his neck.

This was going to lead to more paperwork for him, he knew it. 

Defenestration – 

Natasha scanned the board. Coulson sat across from her, his shirt off to reveal an admirably built chest and of course the bandage that wrapped around one arm and over half of his chest. A bandage was placed across one cheek and his neck and two fingers on his right hand were wrapped in a splint, he sported a variety of minor scratches and several bruises as well. 

She spotted two of Clint's words (‘rate’ which was part for the course for Clint, and ‘fen’ which was only interesting because it was longer than most of Clint’s words) situated in such a way that she could easily take advantage of them, she placed down the letters to spell out 'defenestrate' and then calculated her score (plus triple word score, go her). 

"You used an action verb." Clint motioned to the wine glass sitting on the table and then took a sip of his beer. "Now you have to tell a funny story about being thrown out a window." 

"I'm impressed, Barton." Coulson took a drink of his seltzer water and gave Clint a woozy eyed smile. It was sad, just about the only time they could get Coulson to give them more than tiny split second smiles (he never bothered with false smiles with them) was when he was riding high on pain killers. The few times they had attempted to take him drinking (and by 'they' Natasha of course meant her and Clint) Coulson had drunk Clint under the table and then he was always so solicitous about calling them both a cab before calling one for himself.

"I can't know what defenestrate means?" Clint's attempt to sound upset was derailed by the fact that generally, he wouldn't have a clue. "Your last debrief with Stark you mentioned defenestration, he was complaining for like, a week."

Natasha joined in, ragging on Stark was, of course, a favorite past-time, "He wanted to know why you couldn't just say 'thrown out a window'."

Coulson snorted and let his head loll back against the couch. “I can’t let my Ivy League education go to waste.”

Natasha traded a look with Clint, one more piece being added into their mental jigsaw puzzle. For a man that most would consider transparent there was so much about Coulson that wasn’t known. If they tried they could probably have laid their hands on Coulson’s employee file but that would kill 90% of the fun of trying to figure Coulson out. They waited for more but when Coulson did not volunteer it both of them shrugged. Natasha took a sip of her own wine before starting in on the story of one attempted defenestration.

“The window was covered in frost…”

Comic –

She’s not under full quarantine any longer, for which she is grateful. Sitting around in a white walled lab with windows everywhere and SHIELD medical staff checking in on her every half hour had made her twice as itchy as the actual allergic reaction. Once it had been determined that the reaction was a) allergic, b) not going to kill her, and c) definitely not contagious in anyway (and she had broken the arm of one nurse who had gotten a little fresh) Fury had elected that she could be released from full quarantine although she was off-duty and confined to quarters. Natasha had agreed to stay confined to quarters as long as she got to pick whose quarters she was confined to.

Fury hadn’t even raised an eyebrow when she gave him the address.

The shades are all drawn on Coulson’s windows, blocking out what little natural sunlight he gets. Natasha is grateful for the privacy. She is dressed in a large white t-shirt (Coulson’s) and a pair of white boyshorts that she hadn’t been aware she owned. (She suspects that Clint bought them and left them in her drawer for her.) The cotton feels good on her skin, or at least, doesn’t feel irritating. 

Natasha pauses in the kitchen. There are notes stuck to the fridge and the cupboards. Many of them are dated for the week she spent under full quarantine, thoughts that Clint had but couldn’t address to her thanks to her being under constant surveillance. Some of the notes are from Coulson, rebuttals to Clint or things he wishes to bring up to her. She gathers up all the notes and opens the fridge. There is more food inside than she is used to seeing in Coulson’s refrigerator (Clint must have dragged him shopping). There are more notes stuck inside, one on a slab of expensive chocolate (from Coulson) and another on a variety of health drinks (all signed from Clint all extolling the virtues of this or that for allergic reactions). Natasha briefly considers the chocolate before choosing a smoothie concoction (it’s bright green, Natasha likes that in a smoothie) and heading for the couch. She pulls her knees up under her (they still itch abominably) and reaches for the remote basket with the intent to rifle through Coulson’s DVR and delete half of it. Tucked inside of the basket is a DVD case for some comic book movie.

‘Clint used to watch this with his brother when they were sick’ and there were so many implications to the word ‘sick’ in Clint’s backstory, ‘I placed it in the player’.

Natasha fishes out the various remotes and turns on the DVD. She’ll watch it to tease Clint about, later, and maybe she won’t delete quite so many episodes of SuperNanny as she had planned. 

Counterpane –

They forced the quilt over his head before he batted it aside with a glare. 

“Clint.” Natasha placed her hands on her hips in a no-nonsense pose that did everything to accentuate her breasts and firm stomach and her, well, her everything. Clint gave her his best leer but from the expression on her face (slightly amused but primarily pitying) it didn’t come across terribly well. “You’re sick.”

“It’s only sick-“ Clint rocked forward as he coughed, his chest ached painfully and his throat screamed at him. “The first time.” He finished in a squeak. Then he was off on another round of coughing before Natasha’s firm hands gripped his shoulders and pushed him back onto the gathered pillows. 

Coulson handed Clint a steaming cup of something (it smelled like lemon, it looked like lemons were included but knowing who they worked for who even knew if lemons had ever touched whatever was in the cup) and then turned to look over the coffee table. There were two boxes of tissues (one open and half empty another still sealed), a tub of Vix (slightly used), Clint’s cellphone, a handheld phone for the landline, a coaster for the steaming cup held in Clint’s hand and a glass of water with a little lemon (and a coaster underneath).

“It’s just a cold.” Clint took a deep breath and fought not to cough. Coughing _hurt_. “You don’t need to assemble supplies like it’s a rescue-” He coughed and then blew his nose into the tissue he was clutching in one hand, a little bit of liquid sloshed out of the cup and onto the counterpane as he shook. “-rescue mission, Coulson.” 

“It’s the plague, Hawkeye, and you know it.” Natasha attempted to sound teasing about it but she and Coulson were actually a little worried at this point.

“Daycare plague.” Clint’s chuckle morphed into a cough. “How was I supposed to know the ambassador’s kids were this sick?” An excellent question since only one of the children had shown symptoms of illness and that had only presented itself as a racking cough once the girl began to doze against Hawkeye’s shoulder. Later Coulson had found out that both children had been sick on again and off again for up to a month, hopefully Clint would not be sick that long. The week he had spent coughing and sneezing through SHEILD headquarters (and spreading the plague to uninformed office workers) had been bad enough. He was banned from the field as well, which was beginning to make him twitchy.

“Stay.” Coulson figured short words would work best. “Rest.”

“I’ll stop by for lunch.” Natasha assured Clint.

“And you _will_ call us if you need help.” 

“Yes mom, yes dad.” Clint grumbled into his cup of lemony flavored cold killing goodness. Coulson and Natasha both crept out the door, neither mentioning that they would be regularly checking the private security cameras installed around the apartment to make sure Clint wasn’t doing anything stupid.

(Neither was really surprised when they checked in on Clint a half an hour later he was asleep on the couch, the movie that Natasha had left at Coulson’s after her brush with hives playing on the television.)

Fuzzy – 

Clint leaned against Natasha, Natasha leaned against Phil, Phil leaned against Clint. They were seated back to back to back in the middle of a SHIELD decontamination room, eyes slightly glazed and pupils blown.

“I just feel so…” Natasha began and drifted off, she lifted up a hand to make a motion but it was aborted halfway and she slumped back against Clint and Phil. “…fuzzy.”

“Mmmm.” Coulson agreed. He was rather sure that they had engaged in that conversation before. The fuzzy conversation, not an a conversation about engagement. Not that Coulson would mind being engaged or married to either of his two lovers but he had… there were two of them and he couldn’t marry two people. “It’s kind of nice.”

“Reminds me of this one time,” Clint said drowsily and his head bumped against Natasha’s shoulder. The two of them fell over and ended up sprawled behind Phil. Phil scooted forward and lay back so that his head brushed theirs. “This one time that I…” Clint blinked slowly at the bright lights up above. “What was I saying?”

“Your mother was a hamster.” Natasha stated solemnly. “And your father smells of elderberries.”

Clint’s grin was obvious in his voice when he retorted; “Fuzzy nerfherder.”

“That was far too easy, Barton.” Coulson stated with a snort. “Antolle ulua sulrim.”

They all paused to breathe in silence before dissolving into giggles.

(Once they were free of contaminants and cleared quarantine all video footage of the event was destroyed.)


End file.
